


Green-eyed Monster

by fiacresgirl



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Angry Sex, F/M, Jealous sex, Jealousy, Manipulation, Oral Sex, jealous exes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-28 11:11:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7637794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiacresgirl/pseuds/fiacresgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Oliver leaves to return to Nanda Parbat and rescue Malcolm to undo Thea's betrayal, he and Felicity have it out about his choices and what they mean for her and them. Set late in Season 3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Green-eyed Monster

**Author's Note:**

  * For [n4r4nch4](https://archiveofourown.org/users/n4r4nch4/gifts), [twiddlingthumbsandtoes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/twiddlingthumbsandtoes/gifts).



> This fic was inspired by the events of last week's SDCC. It could be read in two ways. Go therefore into the void carefully, Dear Reader. 
> 
> I dedicate this one to n4r4nch4, twiddlingthumbsandtoes, and all of the readers who contacted me this week.

The news conference shouts at him from Felicity’s monitor as Oliver clank-clanks his way up the salmon ladder. From here he can’t hear what the speaker is saying, but he can see Palmer and Felicity huddling together in front of the entrance to Palmer Tech and clapping when the mayor finishes his speech. Felicity’s wearing the same coat and scarf she’d worn to Russia all of those months ago. That makes him think of the Isabel clusterfuck and how he’d put disappointment into her eyes - not for the first time and certainly not for the last.

He throws himself into the rhythm of raising the bar and relishes the pull on his arms when it connects to the next set of rungs. He’s not wearing gloves, and his palms scrape against the ridges in the metal. It feels satisfying, though. A penance in advance for what he has to do.

He’d slept with Isabel to protect her just like he’s been putting her off all of this year, but that doesn’t seem to stop either of them from hurting. Goddamnit. He tosses his weight up, reaches the final bar, and then drops to the floor, relishing the pain in his feet and calves when he hits the hard concrete. Above the door from the Verdant entrance opens, and he frowns.

“Dig?” he calls.

“No, it’s me,” Felicity calls back, her voice not at all thawed from earlier. Her heels tap down the metal steps.

“Felicity?” He watches her legs as they come into view and longer since her head’s turned away from him. When she reaches the bottom, she dodges around his packed duffle, makes her way over to her bank of computers, and puts her purse down on her chair.

“Yes…” She looks at him questioningly, raising her eyebrows.

“It’s just,” he points to the computer monitor where she’s shaking hands with the mayor, smiling. Her nose is pink from the cold and it matches the scarf she’s unwinding from around her neck now.

She nods as she tosses the scarf on her purse. “It was taped earlier today.”

“Ah,” he says, glancing again at the monitor. “Well, you look pretty.” He smiles at her and hopes she takes his peace offering.

She gives him a sharp look. “Are we doing this?” she asks.

“Doing what?” It’s falsely ingenuous, his smile - fake as hell, really - but it’s all the cover he’s got so he’s using it.

“I told you, Oliver,” she says. “I can’t do this.” She points to her computers and waves at the Arrow Cave. “ _This_ I can do. You? No.”

He runs a hand through his hair. “So I can’t tell you you look nice?”

“What is the point of telling me I look nice?”

“To be kind? To make you feel good.”

“To make me feel good.” She narrows her eyes at him. “How exactly do you think that’s going to make me feel good?”

This conversation is getting away from him. It’s not a problem he’s had with other women. “Okay, I take it back.”

“‘I take it back,’” Felicity repeats under her breath. She relocates her purse and scarf, sits in the chair, and begins tapping at her keyboard. “Just… Just don’t, Oliver. We’re not together, we’re never going to be together because you are going to kill yourself, and that’s _your choice_.”

He frowns. This isn’t going as he planned. Back in the fall, after Sara died, everything had seemed so straightforward, but he hadn’t counted on how hard it would be to do all of this without her. She’s here, but the best parts of her are now closed off from him. He needs her smile, right now when he’s leaving again especially. He needs to have her tell him what to do with that quiet, strong certainty and understanding. The world looks different through her eyes - more manageable. If she’d tell him he can do this, he’ll be able to, but she doesn’t want to tell him, obviously.

“We’ve been together,” he says.

She looks down, and he sees the stain of red seep across the smooth skin of her cheeks and underneath the freckles on the bridge of her nose. “Once,” she says.

“More than once,” he says.

“One night,” she clarifies. Then she straightens. “That’s not the point. You don’t want to be with me. You’d literally rather die than stay here in Starling City with us.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t want to be with you,” Oliver says. “I _never_ said that.”

“You won’t be with me, then. What’s the difference?”

To his mind there’s an enormity of difference, a gaping abyss of difference - harder to cross than any pit or ravine on Lian Yu.

“The difference is _I love you_ ,” he says.

“Well, I don’t love you,” she says, straightening. “And one night doesn’t make us exes. How many of your other one-night stands did you consider girlfriends? And did they know that? Were they willing to watch you die _again_?” She’s staring at him fiercely now.

Something behind his eyelids flashes. “It wasn’t a one-night stand,” he says, his voice lowering. It wasn’t. How can she even think that?  “A one-night stand isn’t like...what we did.”

She plants her feet flat on the floor and leans her weight forward in her chair. “You’re the expert,” she says. “But in my experience, if you have sex with someone and then go back to being,” she twirls a finger in the air, “coworkers, that’s fucking, not making love.”

“It was not fucking,” he says, grinding his molars. “Jesus, Felicity.”

“Oliver,” she says slowly, “we work together. That’s it. That’s all there is.”

It’s his turn to stare at her.

She blows out a breath and crosses her arms. “I told you what you had to do. You need to be willing to be with me - really _be with me -_ and you can’t go rescue Malcolm Merlyn.”

And there it is. She doesn’t understand why he needs Merlyn to defeat Ra’s, the man who _stabbed him through the chest and pushed him off a mountain_. She won’t even try. Usually she is so willing, even eager to get into his head, but this one time, she won’t give him the benefit of the doubt. How does she think he can pull this off without Merlyn? What does she think Thea will do if she’s responsible for killing her father?

“I can’t,” he says. “You know why--”

She’s on her feet in a moment. “Malcolm is the reason for at least 80 percent of what you’ve gone through, Oliver! Directly responsible! Those scars all over your body? You wouldn’t have any of them if you’d never met him. Even the one Ra’s gave you” she sticks her finger into the swollen red line, and he winces, “is because Malcolm threw his daughter - your sister - directly into Ra’s’ path! I hate him. He should die. I’m glad he’s going to die. It’s him or me - I told you that.”

“You think I don’t know that?” he says, “I hate him too--”

“Not enough, apparently, if you won’t let Ra’s kill him! He’s a fucking monster! I can’t even think of things bad enough to say about him. I wouldn’t trust a single thing that came out of his mouth. You know he came to us? When you were…when you were gone. He gave me Ra’s’ sword and told me you were dead.” She swallows hard, and he sees the tears in her eyes.

“He thought I was dead, Felicity. Everyone thought I was dead. I almost was.” He wants so badly to hold her. He can see how the days and weeks after Malcolm’s news weighed on her from the way she’s holding her chin so up and still.

“I want him dead,” she says. “And I want you to leave me alone.” She turns her face away from him. “Just leave me alone.”

The sword hadn’t this painful. He remembers how it sliced through him and didn’t hurt at first. Then he’d seen them: his parents, Thea, her. “I thought of you--” He scrubs his hands over his face. “You were my _last thought_ before I died, Felicity.”

She glances back at him in surprise, her eyes softening for a second and then hardening again. Her jaw clenches. “Then I should have been the first thought you had when you came back. I’ve told you what I need.”

“For fuck’s sake, it’s not that simple! There’s Thea, and the city--”

“Thea!” she yells. “How many times are you going to put her before us? You know I love Thea, but you’ve already sacrificed yourself for her once already. She’s an adult! She made her choice. You can’t keep cleaning up after her!”

“She didn’t know what she was doing! She doesn’t know what it like to live with… To live with that kind of guilt.” He sees his father pulling the trigger in that life raft, and the blood running down what’s left of his face.

“God damn it, Oliver! Do any of us know what we’re doing? Let her find out like the rest of us had to!” She swallows hard and speaks again. “Malcolm’s evil, and he doesn’t care about you. Everything he does, he does for himself!” She paces around him and then stops to look him in the eye. “You say you love me. Well, I’m tired of being the last person on your list! Do you think I like knowing where I fall on your priorities? You take me for granted! ‘Oh, there’s Felicity. She always going to be here.’”

Oliver slams his fist into the pillar she’s standing next to. “I do not take you for granted! I love you!”

“You made me your secretary without asking me! You assume I’ll be here every night! I don’t get paid for this, Oliver! I don’t get paid for any of this, and there isn’t enough pay for having to wait through almost a month of thinking you were dead! At least Ray pays me and promotes me, and he wants to know what will make me happy!”

He flashes back to that night in her office, watching Palmer tilt his head down and kiss her. The glass between him and them muffled some sound, but he’d heard the little gasp she’d made and the sigh. He clenches both his fists. “I do not want to talk about Palmer!”

“Well too goddamned bad, Oliver, because that’s where I’m headed! I have to do what’s right for me for once! Following you is obviously a road that leads nowhere. You say you love me, and then you do whatever you want? How about asking me once what I think is best? What I need? I’ve been with you night and day for years, and you’ve never once asked.”

How can she say that? All he does is think about her and how he can keep her from going down in the sinking ship that is his life.

She steps forward, and puts her finger in his chest, and pushes. “I have other options, you know. Other men who will appreciate me. Who won’t wait three years to tell me I’m pretty and only after they tell me to fuck off!”

Other men. Other _men_. How many men are there? He knows Felicity’s gorgeous and brilliant and sexy and loving. That’s a given. What other men besides Palmer have noticed too? What is she telling him? He moves his weight forward until she’s backed up against the thick steel pillar and says, “I’ve been doing this vigilante thing for _three years now_ , every night. I’ve lost my parents, my company, my family’s house, _Tommy_ , and now you!”

Her neck tilts back as she meets his gaze. Her hand is splayed across his chest. “You didn’t lose me, Oliver. You never had me. You didn’t want to,” she spits out. “And, anyway,  I. Own. My. Self. Get it? That’s true with you or any other man.”

His vision is red tinged. “I’m not doing this so you can sleep with other men!”

“I’m not a prize for your good deeds! I’ll sleep with who I want!”

He stops for a moment and breathes deeply, counts backwards from 5. This is getting away from him. Her chest is heaving against him, the pupils in her eyes are huge and black, and he remembers something. He has a motherfucking epiphany, sent from whatever god exists out there who doesn’t yet hate him:

She wants him. His body anyways. That is the one thing that’s he’s always known right from the start. From that first moment in her cubicle. His body turns her on. They are pressed against each other, against the pillar, and he can feel her breath growing more ragged the longer he stands here with his hard dick pushed against her stomach.

“You want _me_ ,” he says. It’s not a question.

She swallows. “No.”

“‘No,’” He repeats and laughs a little bitterly. “You do.”

“I don’t,” she says and gulps this time. “Ray--”

“Ray nothing,” he says. “You want _me_.” He leans down until their faces are level, and then he reaches down for the hem of her fortunately short skirt. “If I put my hand here,” he slides it up her thigh, “I’m going to find…”

And, yes, there’s the proof. Something explodes inside his chest. “...that you’re wet. For _me_. Not Ray.”

“Get away from me,” she says, shoving at his shoulders.

“Soaking wet,” he says with satisfaction. He puts a finger through those tiny panties she’s got on and tugs.

“No,” she says.

“I’m not a scientist _like Ray_ ,” he says. “But the evidence is here.” He slips a finger up her slit and finds her swollen clit. Presses against it. She gasps. He kneels and jerks up her skirt with one hand. “Hold this,” he says.

She stares at him, the blue of her eyes almost eclipsed by the black, and then she does. He presses his face to her mound and kisses her clit, then sucks it into his mouth. His hand drags her panties the rest of the way down, and she lifts her leg so they can come off.

She’s warm and wriggling as he eats her out. Her hands are on his shoulders and her hips thrust over and over into his face. She smells incredible, and the noises she’s making are better than any music he’s ever heard. They bounce off the high ceiling of the Arrow Cave and reverberate: gasps, humming, grunts. He has two fingers inside of her feeling for the best spot, and when he finds it, he knows because her hips and her sexy mouth tell him.

“Oh, God, Oliver, yes,” she moans, and he smiles against her clit. She can’t call whatever they have a _one_ -night stand anymore.

He’s so tired of this life. He’s tired of the responsibilities his father gave him, responsibilities his father found too hard to live up to himself but had no problem sloughing off onto him. He’s tired of being alone. He’s tired of losing. For this one moment, though, it doesn’t feel like he’s losing. She’s gasping, “Oh oh oh ohhhhhhhh… Oh, God, there, Oliver. Please. Don’t stop. Don’t--”

She can’t say he’s _never_ done anything for her now either. She yells his name and sags back against the pillar, her eyes closed, catching her breath. “Just do it,” she says after a minute.

He’s surprised. He hadn’t thought this far. He just wanted her to know she was wrong about him. Still, he wants it to be clear. She needs to say it. “Do it?” he asks.

“Fuck me,” she says. “That’s what you want. That’s all you want.”

He waits until she opens her eyes to say, “That’s not all I want.” He holds her gaze. “Not even close.”

She clenches her jaw. “Well, that’s what I want. All I want.”

“No,” he says, but he’s reaching for the fly in his cargo pants anyway. He undoes his buckle too.

“Take it, Oliver,” she says. “It’s all I can give you, and it’s all you’re getting.”

“No,” he says, but he’s pushing himself inside her, lifting her against the pillar, holding her weight with one arm. He has another thought.

“Shouldn’t I get a condom?”

“It’s fine,” she says. “I have an IUD.”

He knows what that means. It means she’s ready to have sex anytime. With anyone. That thought makes him a little crazy, and he drives into her with real force, pulling back only at the last second so he doesn’t hurt her. “An IUD,” he says.

“Just shut up,” she says, “and fuck me.”

He kisses her so _she_ will shut up, and she threads her arms around his neck and holds on. Their kissing takes on the same rhythm as their hips, and he's on the screaming edge where pleasure and pain meet. She scratches and scrabbles at his back and clenches around him. The smack of their lips as they break apart for air is obscene. Her eyes are closed again, and her face looks like she’s in pain, it’s so tight and pulled, but he knows she coming hard.  

“You love me. I know you do,” he says. “Say it.”

She shakes her head. He drags one leg around his hip and rocks harder into her. She likes the deeper penetration, he remembers. She likes it a lot. He leans down and takes one of her breasts in his mouth, tonguing the nipple and then pulling it through his teeth. She cries out. Her eyes are closed, her head is hanging down, and the leg around his waist is shaking hard. He sucks hard on the skin at the top of her breast. That will leave a mark she won’t want to explain to anyone.

“Can Palmer do this? Can Palmer make you cry when you come because it feels like this?” He drives into her over and over, fighting the urge to finish because when he does, this is over and who knows when she’ll let him touch her again.

“I’ll end this arrangement with Malcolm,” he says, gasping, “as soon as I’ve rescued him. I’ve learned almost all I can from him anyway.” It’s a lie, and it’s a lie because of what he can’t tell her, but it’s a lie he can fix. Somehow he’ll find a way to face Ra’s and the League without Malcolm. He will - if he can just find a minute to think clearly. He’d do anything to keep her. He’d do anything to see her happy with him for once.

She lifts her face up and looks at him sharply. “Don’t,” she says. She clenches hard against him, and he feels the sensation in his balls and lower back expand and explode at the same time. He’s breathless and falling against her, sagging against the pillar, and she’s gasping as well. They slide to the floor, but he holds her leg where it is so he can stay inside her as long as possible. He doesn’t want to ever leave her again.

After several minutes, she shifts her weight, and he feels himself slide out. “I haven’t slept with him,” she says in a sober voice. “ _That_ isn’t a lie.” She’s challenging him, and he wishes he could promise her more. He wants to promise her everything, but his life has gotten so complicated. One bad decision all of those years ago, and this is what he’s left with.

He says the one thing that he knows is true. “You’ll always be my girl, Felicity.”

She smiles sadly up at him, exhausted. “I know,” she says, “but I don’t want to be your girl, Oliver. It’s not enough now. I want more.”

**Author's Note:**

> I really wanted a scene with this much passion in the back half of season 3, but I guess we fic writers have to do for ourselves sometimes, right? Leave a comment if you enjoyed it. I'd love to hear your thoughts.


End file.
